


The Tale of the Dead Princess

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: Gen, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-12
Updated: 2005-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It has always been white linen at the root of it.</i> Irina, post-S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of the Dead Princess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahtzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/gifts).



> Written for [](http://yahtzee63.livejournal.com/profile)[**yahtzee63**](http://yahtzee63.livejournal.com/)'s challenge of Jack, Irina, the Alps and "You're the only one in this family who hasn't risen from the dead."

It has always been white linen at the root of it.

Irina does not wish to lay the blame for her life at the doorstep of a crush of fabric, but, if pressed, she would have to think to come up with another way to clothe her life.

The moment that springs most readily to mind is when Jack had been injured, years past. She had received official notification of his death from Jack's employers three hours before she had received unofficial notification of his "alive but missing" status from her own contacts. She had waited two weeks for the news to officially change, and had borne her almost-widowhood with stoic detachment. (Emily had told Sloane that it was shock when she had thought that Irina could not overhear, and had wrapped her up in thick blankets and crisp white linen.)

Irina had not been unduly upset at the time, merely anxious that her mark would be lost before any useful information could be gained. It would have been too late to start over with someone else if he had died.

(He had not.)

Irina had paused long enough to array her hair about her shoulders in the outlandish Farrah style that Jack had found so charming, then had hurried to his bedside and tearfully clasped his hand. Jack's skin had been pale and blotchy, as if sunburned (_napalm?_ she wondered), his curly dark hair in dripping ringlets on the white hospital bedlinen. She had made all the right noises a concerned fiancée should make, and nodded at all the right places as Arvin Sloane explained that something had gone terribly wrong at the office. _Communists,_ he had said, and she had nodded and wiped at her eyes. _Yes. Those dirty Reds!_

Jack had thankfully been unconscious.

She brought the brightest flowers she could find for Jack's bedside and checked to make sure that his feet were not facing the door.

Perhaps she had risked too much.

*

Irina remembers wrapping Nadia in squares of swaddling linen for those few short days she was allowed to keep her, and pressing the tiny squalling form to her breast. She had carried the babe in seclusion, as was expected: hidden from prying eyes and the deadly cold of the Russian winter, she had been caught unawares by Nadia's early arrival and had found herself searching for a baking oven on which to give birth. The cold had crept in from all corners, and her waters had spilled across the kitchen floor.

Katya, in the impromptu role of midwife, had wrapped Irina in three heavy furs and dragged her through the streets, slipping and skidding over ice two inches thick to the nearest bania. "I will not have my sister birth a babe on the oven!" Katya had said, as if that would be the end of it; as if she could make the child keep long enough just by willpower.

It had worked. (Of course it had: it was _Katya_.)

Nadia had been born in the only place guaranteed heat and helping female hands: in the fresh spring water of the bania, the air thick with sulphur and the lilting encouragement of the naked women crowded around. Irina – spent; exhausted – can only really remember the taste of Nadia's sweat as she cuddled the naked form to her, licking over the face and carefully checking each small hand for the correct number of digits. Nadia had made contented little noises as she had settled down and latched on, hands drawn into fists as if to demonstrate her general dissatisfaction with the world.

And Irina had thought – why did I bear my other child across white linen?

*

But it had been Katya who had cut the umbilical cord that time, not Jack or even Sloane, as would have been their right. That one gesture is all that had made Sydney's birth as Irina's labour, rather than another task.

Jack had been surprisingly squeamish about staying for the labour, apparently upset to his wife in such pain. Irina had insisted that he cut the cord as she lay bleeding on the white hospital bed, surrounded by men prying her legs apart and hyperactive blonde girls urging her to _push_!!

He had refused.

Irina – mere inches away from destroying it all and cursing him in the foulest language she knew – had screamed her fury until he had relented.

She had had to name one child too early and the later one would not be named by her at all, and things were all mixed up and out of order.

(What was she to do with the afterbirth?)

She remembers that the foot of her bed had faced the door.

*

Nadia's hair is a spill of colour across the starkness of the hospital linen, her skin as thin and pale as tissue paper. Irina is sure that if she touches even one fingertip to her daughter's cheek, the skin will break and bleed. There are tiny lines of discomfort at the corners of Nadia's closed eyes, where her soot-black lashes cast greying shadows across her cheeks.

She looks dead already.

"Sydney thought that she might like it better here," Jack says from the doorway. He has shed his perennial grey suit in favour of plain blue jeans and a white turtleneck. Outside, everyone is wrapped in monochrome and tasteful understated platinum jewellery, talking in hushed voices and blending in beautifully with the décor.

Irina knows that she is the only Russian to have seen Nadia, and is irrationally pleased at the tiny proofs she finds: white clothing; hushed voices; a sick bed facing the door. (She must have that moved before she leaves.) No Russian, however closely trained to mimic Americana fancies, would let their youngest babe lie in swathes of colourless linen, as if ready for the morgue.

Outside, the Alps gleam an empty palette through the high windows.

Some idiot has brought a bunch of lilies that crowd over the small nightstand, completing the gruesome tableau.

(She is suddenly bringing a suckling nameless infant to her breast and her husband is smiling. "What shall we name her?")

She will not see her children in one room again, because Nadia will not survive.

"I keep telling her to wake up," Jack says after a moment. "Just reminding her that she's the only one in this family who hasn't risen from the dead." He is still hovering uncertainly in the doorway, as if unsure whether he has a right to be here. But Sloane is buried alive in her old cell, and the CIA is unravelling in Sydney's hands, and who is to tend to this little one?

*

She had cajoled Emily into burying Sydney's afterbirth beneath her own house. It'll bring you babies, she had said. _It'll bring you_ my _baby_, though she could not say that.

Nadia's afterbirth Katya buried under ice and snow in a communal garden. _It'll bring her home to us, to Russia, Ira,_ she had said. Irina had hugged the swaddled infant to her chest and said nothing.

*

The foot of Nadia's bed faces the door.

Irina's already decided that they will bury her beneath the snow.

*

fin


End file.
